The Reversed Lottery: What Thor Pedersen Taught Us in Nashville
The numbers alone stop you
On October 10, 2013, Pedersen left Denmark to visit every country in the world without taking a single flight. He expected to be home in under four years. He returned nine years, nine months and 16 days later, having covered a distance equal to nine and a half laps of the equator or one trip to the moon.
Along the way he contracted cerebral malaria, crossed West Africa during the Ebola outbreak, spent two years stranded in Hong Kong during the pandemic and was held at gunpoint more than once. Three of the ships he sailed on are now confirmed to be at the bottom of the sea. Around 500 people have visited every country on Earth. To this day, Pedersen remains the only one to do it without flying.
Guiria, Venezuela
Stories that had the room leaning in
He opened with a four-day storm in the North Atlantic, near where the Titanic went down, on a container ship that was not ice class. Convinced it was going under, he asked an officer on the bridge whether this was normal. The reply: “Son, this is nothing.” Four hours before reaching Canada, he could smell pine forest on the wind before land was even in sight.
Then came Venezuela. Every traveler he met had warned him not to go. When he got there, two dentistry students on the bus bought everything on the service station menu to show him their country dish by dish. Days later in the fishing village of Güiria, a stranger knocked on his door, took his passport, drove the immigration officer from her home to her office on a Friday afternoon so she could stamp him out and returned him to a boat with four outboard engines bound for Trinidad. After a professional but thorough search by the Coast Guard mid-crossing, the man who had arranged it all handed Thor some money and said, “This is for breakfast.”
Thor’s motto — “A stranger is a friend you’ve never met before” — was tested and confirmed in country after country.
Lessons for people who sell travel for a living
I asked what a decade on $20 a day taught him about the real economics of travel. His answer was not about money. On that budget he slept on streets and skipped meals, but he also dined with millionaires and presidents and stayed in five-star hotels. His conclusion: “It's not so much the money; it’s who you are and how you behave towards people.”
On infrastructure, the biggest surprise was the Caribbean. You can sometimes see the next country across the water, and there is no ferry. Getting between islands meant handshakes, rum and a chain of, “I have a brother, he’s a fisherman” phone calls. He was clear that the whole journey was a collaboration. He did not do it alone; he was carried forward by people the entire way.
Caribbean Culture
Your questions, and the winner
The questions from the Executive Forum audience in Nashville were outstanding. Josh asked what Thor learned about himself, and he said that he is far more capable than he knew. Terri asked about the most inspiring person he met. The answer was Maria, who found him lost on a snowy night in Suwalki, Poland, cooked for him, gave him a bed and drove him to the bus for Lithuania the next morning, wanting nothing in return.
Leslie Muus won the signed book, with this: After a decade depending on strangers, what do you wish everyone understood about people? Thor’s reply was the line of the forum. Meeting people is a reverse lottery. With a normal ticket you lose and lose and lose. Shake a hand, look someone in the eye, start a conversation and you win and win and win. “The odds are overwhelmingly in our favor.”
He even tested it in Nashville. No trouble, no bad encounters, just kind people and good conversation.
If you were in the room, you know. If you were not, next year is already in the diary: Austin, Texas, August 24 and 25. Do not miss it.
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